posted
According to OSC, a good length is the length it takes to tell the tale. If it takes you 73,000 words to tell your story, then that's your length. The Seventh Son, remember, was the shortest book in the series (in fact, the shortest he'd ever written, if I remember correctly) because he told the tale and didn't feel the need to pile unnecessary clutter to add to the word count.
Anyway, those are my 2 cents.
What I've been wondering is, would publishers shy away from a book that's a little long, or a little short, if unpublished (or have only published short fiction...which I haven't)?
posted
Most publishers tell you their length preferences in their submission guidelines. There isn't really an industry standard, unfortunately, at least not as far as I can tell. I've seen publishers that don't want anything over 80,000 words, and publishers that don't want anything under 100,000 words. Now, if the book is phenomenal enough, which of course yours always is, I would think a publisher would probably publish it anyway, but I try to stay close to their guidelines when I can. It can't hurt, right?
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
From a reader's standpoint, length is important. If it is a good story, I feel ripped off if it is short. If it is a longer story, I feel ripped off if it is bad. Nothing worse than a really bad book except a really long bad book.
Since we assume yours is good, it should be long.
73,000 words is a good length, I think, especually if you are counting actual words and not using the formula to find word count by the fuzzy word count math publishers like. That fuzzy count confuses me, but ends up being much more than actual word count.
posted
I agree with what some of the others are saying. As long as your doesn't leave anything out, then it doesn't matter if it is shorter. If you feel like it just isn't quite finished, then maybe you need to look at it again.
Also... Something I'm learning from my writing group is that things I think are important, aren't necessarily important to the reader and things that I feel are explained, they feel could use some more exposition.
I'm a little curious when you last had this read by someone. If you're just finishing a re-write/edit cycle, perhaps now would be a good time to get some readers on board and see what they think.
I don't think you need to go padding the story just to get a few more words into it. See what your readers have to say and make adjustments only if you feel you have to.
posted
Is that 73,000 by the word processor count, or based on page count? 'Cause if it was word processor count, and you switched to page count, it'd probably come out more like 80,000 which sounds much better. Posts: 626 | Registered: Jun 2003
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